On this day in 1985, US President Ronald Reagan bestowed the first National Medal of Technology and Innovation upon three IBMers: Fred Brooks, Erich Bloch and Bob O. Evans. The award has since become the preeminent recognition in the country for significant contributions to society through technology. All three IBMers won the medal for their work on the development of the IBM System/360, which revolutionized the data processing for the IT industry.

The System/360 was the first family of computers designed with both commercial and scientific use cases in mind, allowing customers to expand their systems as their needs grew — which was a first in the industry at the time. Mainframe systems have come to underpin much of the modern economy, securely managing transactions for the world’s largest banks, bookings for the world’s biggest airlines, and data for just about every industry.

IBM’s research and development into mainframe systems has continued to this day, up through IBM z16, the latest iteration of the IBM Z platform that brought industry leading AI inferencing and cyber-resiliency to the hybrid cloud. None of that would’ve been possible without the earliest pioneers on System/360.

Subscribe and stay up to date on news and announcements from IBM Research YouTube → http://ibm.biz/subscribe_IBM_Research

For more news, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter, Future Forward:
https://www.ibm.com/account/reg/us-en...

#mainframe #technology #history